Obama has a likely hold on 252 of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win. Mitt Romney has a likely 266. Obama, Curl writes, needs a game-changer: Enter Hillary Clinton, to attract female voters.

Clinton won 18 million votes in the 2008 primaries, and last month her approval was as high as it’s ever been — 65 percent, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll. Fox News polling shows Biden’s approval hovering at 41 percent.

Curl also notes that women have replaced Obama with Romney as their standard-bearer. In April, Obama held a 49 percent share among women, with Romney at 43 percent. The latest CBS/NY Times poll shows Romney leads with 46 percent, with Obama trailing at 44 percent.

Most critically, swapping Biden for Clinton makes 2012 another revolution, this time based on gender instead of race. Clinton would be the first female vice president, and only the third to run (after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin).

In addition, Clinton could appeal to voters Obama is losing: white working- and middle-class Americans.

Michelle Obama once called herself “the most powerful woman in Washington,” Curl wrote. But the president, he added, knows that replacing Biden with his secretary of state “will be his only path to re-election.”

“One state Democratic leader even tells me the bumper stickers are already printed,” he wrote, “sitting in a warehouse in (where else?) Little Rock, Ark.”